Re: [NA-Discuss] Unrest continues to be met with Internet lockdown
Eric wrote:
I see no point in revisiting the recent limited statements of ICANN or ALAC, or their offered rationals, but I do see a point in attempting to know what access models actually exist, and having data sufficient to support predictive modeling of disruptive local policy on the regional and global internet.
How can we put something like this together? This kind of information-gathering would be helpful to the user community and could also probably be used to get the attention of the press. -----Original Message-----
From: Garth Bruen at KnujOn <gbruen@knujon.com> Sent: Feb 16, 2011 11:50 AM To: Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@abenaki.wabanaki.net> Cc: na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Unrest continues to be met with Internet lockdown
Not proposing a re-write, just staying abreast
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Unrest continues to be met with Internet lockdown From: Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@abenaki.wabanaki.net> Date: Wed, February 16, 2011 11:44 am To: na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org
Garth,
Again, I never hope to be more than a minority of one, and while I read MENA IT news on NANOG, MENOG, Aljazeera (commercially censored in most North American broadcast/cable media markets) and through S/N feeds from or about contacts in West Asia and North Africa, I find it useful to distinguish what technical means are being deployed to effect some explicit or implicit state policy goal.
I* know that targeted communications degradation was attempted first, affecting S/N data flows, and when either that failed, due to the scale of the S/N participating nodes (thousands of SMS and IPv4 capable devices sourcing audio and video capture data) or the policy goal required degradation of more instances of communications than just S/N, prefix withdrawals were announced by all access and transit providers with the exception of the Noor Group, who's prefixes were withdrawn later.
The mechanism pursued by the Syrian state until last week, and the mechanism utilized by the Iranian state, during the last election, and recently, S/N blocking and rate throttling, and the mechanisms utilized by the Algerian state, the Bahrain state, the Lybian state, are distinct.
The utility of "keeping score by technical means" is that it allows an analysis of whether other technical mechanisms such as deep packet inspection and content analysis, routine in North America and present also in Europe, but requiring high capitalization of the intercept platform, are keeping pace with the repressive state's policy requirements and the liberation social movements and the political organizations means of maintaining internal and external communications.
I see no point in revisiting the recent limited statements of ICANN or ALAC, or their offered rationals, but I do see a point in attempting to know what access models actually exist, and having data sufficient to support predictive modeling of disruptive local policy on the regional and global internet.
Eric
* Some subscribers have attributed other mechanisms, or a lack of data sufficient to make any attribution. ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------
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Relevant article in todays NY Times: "Egypt Leaders Found ‘Off’ Switch for Internet," Feb. 15, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?hp This issue is not going away. ALAC should develop a position. Marc. On Feb 16, 2011, at 12:36 PM, Beau Brendler wrote:
Eric wrote:
I see no point in revisiting the recent limited statements of ICANN or ALAC, or their offered rationals, but I do see a point in attempting to know what access models actually exist, and having data sufficient to support predictive modeling of disruptive local policy on the regional and global internet.
How can we put something like this together? This kind of information-gathering would be helpful to the user community and could also probably be used to get the attention of the press.
-----Original Message-----
From: Garth Bruen at KnujOn <gbruen@knujon.com> Sent: Feb 16, 2011 11:50 AM To: Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@abenaki.wabanaki.net> Cc: na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Unrest continues to be met with Internet lockdown
Not proposing a re-write, just staying abreast
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Unrest continues to be met with Internet lockdown From: Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@abenaki.wabanaki.net> Date: Wed, February 16, 2011 11:44 am To: na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org
Garth,
Again, I never hope to be more than a minority of one, and while I read MENA IT news on NANOG, MENOG, Aljazeera (commercially censored in most North American broadcast/cable media markets) and through S/N feeds from or about contacts in West Asia and North Africa, I find it useful to distinguish what technical means are being deployed to effect some explicit or implicit state policy goal.
I* know that targeted communications degradation was attempted first, affecting S/N data flows, and when either that failed, due to the scale of the S/N participating nodes (thousands of SMS and IPv4 capable devices sourcing audio and video capture data) or the policy goal required degradation of more instances of communications than just S/N, prefix withdrawals were announced by all access and transit providers with the exception of the Noor Group, who's prefixes were withdrawn later.
The mechanism pursued by the Syrian state until last week, and the mechanism utilized by the Iranian state, during the last election, and recently, S/N blocking and rate throttling, and the mechanisms utilized by the Algerian state, the Bahrain state, the Lybian state, are distinct.
The utility of "keeping score by technical means" is that it allows an analysis of whether other technical mechanisms such as deep packet inspection and content analysis, routine in North America and present also in Europe, but requiring high capitalization of the intercept platform, are keeping pace with the repressive state's policy requirements and the liberation social movements and the political organizations means of maintaining internal and external communications.
I see no point in revisiting the recent limited statements of ICANN or ALAC, or their offered rationals, but I do see a point in attempting to know what access models actually exist, and having data sufficient to support predictive modeling of disruptive local policy on the regional and global internet.
Eric
* Some subscribers have attributed other mechanisms, or a lack of data sufficient to make any attribution. ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------
------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------
------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------
On 2/16/11 12:41 PM, Marc Rotenberg wrote:
Relevant article in todays NY Times:
"Egypt Leaders Found ‘Off’ Switch for Internet," Feb. 15, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?hp
It is a surprisingly information free article. Not to blog-whore but I don't see any point in writing something twice, see http://wampum.wabanaki.net/content/lack-clue-right-copy.
This issue is not going away. ALAC should develop a position.
That moment has come and gone. Eric
On 16 February 2011 12:41, Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg@epic.org> wrote:
This issue is not going away. ALAC should develop a position.
Agreed, but for this to be relevant for ICANN I would like to make such a position both broader and more specific: - broader in the sense that government meddling in the DNS goes beyond high profile umbrella Internet shutdowns, and definitely beyond the one-time circumstance in Egypt. Targeted, ongoing, content-related seizing of domains in the US (see other threads here related to COICA etc) also pose a substantial threat to the stability of the namespace. But this is not limited to the US; in ways this is just a continuing threat that includes existing filtering of domains in China and official blockage of the.il ccTLD in some Mideast countries. - more specific in that ICANN is not about all things to do with Internet governance. If our message is going to carry weight it has to directly address, and limit itself to, ICANN's own mandate. I would feel far more comfortable being part of an alliance on this that also perhaps includes ISOC and IGF, because they have the scope to address issues that are beyond our specific focus. (This is why I encouraged linkage with the ISOC statement on Egypt). We do have something to contribute. ICANN *claims* its actions to be independent of domain content, yet its shameful meddling in the .xxx issue (which ALAC opposed) set a poor precedent which I fear will be exploited again. I would escalate this beyond NARALO, though, for this is hardly a North American regional issue. - Evan
Hi, A reminder this is not (just) about domain names. It is about IP addresses and AS numbers ad the fact that sections of the Internet where made inaccessible. Not just that the domain names could not be translated to IP addresses, but the addresses and the autonomous routing systems by which they were served were removed from the Internet. That is very much more serious that just a failure in name to IP address translation, and this is also within ALAC purview as the global reachability of all distributed addresses and AS numbers is ICANN responsibility. One does not have to stretch at all for ICANN relevancy. a. On 16 Feb 2011, at 13:36, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
On 16 February 2011 12:41, Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg@epic.org> wrote:
This issue is not going away. ALAC should develop a position.
Agreed, but for this to be relevant for ICANN I would like to make such a position both broader and more specific:
- broader in the sense that government meddling in the DNS goes beyond high profile umbrella Internet shutdowns, and definitely beyond the one-time circumstance in Egypt. Targeted, ongoing, content-related seizing of domains in the US (see other threads here related to COICA etc) also pose a substantial threat to the stability of the namespace. But this is not limited to the US; in ways this is just a continuing threat that includes existing filtering of domains in China and official blockage of the.il ccTLD in some Mideast countries.
- more specific in that ICANN is not about all things to do with Internet governance. If our message is going to carry weight it has to directly address, and limit itself to, ICANN's own mandate. I would feel far more comfortable being part of an alliance on this that also perhaps includes ISOC and IGF, because they have the scope to address issues that are beyond our specific focus. (This is why I encouraged linkage with the ISOC statement on Egypt).
We do have something to contribute. ICANN *claims* its actions to be independent of domain content, yet its shameful meddling in the .xxx issue (which ALAC opposed) set a poor precedent which I fear will be exploited again.
I would escalate this beyond NARALO, though, for this is hardly a North American regional issue.
- Evan ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
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That is very much more serious that just a failure in name to IP address translation, and this is also within ALAC purview as the global reachability of all distributed addresses and AS numbers is ICANN responsibility.
One does not have to stretch at all for ICANN relevancy.
Agree, but Peter and Rod already blew off all ICANN relevancy [1], and their claims are made in this RALO and by ALAC as well. Eric [1] personal communications of 2/1/11
On 16 February 2011 15:02, Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@abenaki.wabanaki.net>wrote:
That is very much more serious that just a failure in name to IP address translation, and this is also within ALAC purview as the global reachability of all distributed addresses and AS numbers is ICANN responsibility.
One does not have to stretch at all for ICANN relevancy.
Agree, but Peter and Rod already blew off all ICANN relevancy [1], and their claims are made in this RALO and by ALAC as well.
As I said ... it's one thing to create a very swift reaction to events in Egypt that anyone would listen to, quite another to advance a deliberate (and deliberative) policy that demands ICANN take whatever measures possible to prevent (and maybe subvert) all politically-motivated efforts to make Internet names and numbers inaccessible. I was wary about the former but am fully supportive of the latter. And having a concrete position in place puts us in a better position than we were to make a seriously-taken statement based on it. - Evan
participants (5)
-
Avri Doria -
Beau Brendler -
Eric Brunner-Williams -
Evan Leibovitch -
Marc Rotenberg